“Tharizdun!” he muttered through his pain. “Ender and Anathema. Eater of Worlds.”
With each second, the gate revealed a new world to his eyes. The Chained God, once free, would tear through them all like a bulette scattering anthills when it burrowed up from the earth. He would consume them, and each life he extinguished would feed the furnace of his power.
“Undoer,” he grunted. “Come and wreak destruction.”
“Wreak destruction,” Jaeran echoed, shouting through his own agony.
“Destruction,” whispered a third voice. It was all around, and in Albric’s mind. It might have been his own voice. He recognized it as the voice of the Voidharrow—That’s its name, what Tharizdun called the Progenitor. Tharizdun doesn’t know.
Doesn’t know? Tharizdun knows all!
Jaeran screamed and staggered away from the gate, clutching his face. He dug his fingertips into his empty eye socket, trying in vain to pull the Voidharrow out.
The gate flickered again, showing him a dozen worlds in the span of his glance. A dozen worlds that would all be destroyed by the coming of the Chained God.
“Let them burn,” he growled, and he bent his will to steady the gate once more.
Nowhere stepped through the arch first, the spiral symbol glowing slightly as it activated the portal’s magic. An oblivion of darkness and silence seized him, and he felt nothing—no wall within his reach, no ground beneath his feet, no breath of air on his skin.
A presence appeared at his shoulder, invisible in the darkness, and a voice croaked in his ear, “You proceed to your doom.”
Nowhere’s body went cold with terror as he recognized the voice of Tavet the Heartless, the night hag of Nera’s undercity. What is she doing here? he thought.
“Have you tired of hunting this hydra yet, tiefling?” Tavet asked. Her voice set him on edge, reminding him of every unexplained noise that ever frightened him in the night.
“The profit’s been small the last few days, I must admit.” Nowhere tried to sound more cavalier than he felt, but his voice sounded small and fragile in his own ears. Where are the others? he thought. They were right behind me.
“And you’re about to lose it all. What a pity.”
A hot flare of anger started to thaw his terror. “What are you doing here, Tavet? Aren’t you a long way from home?”
“Not as far as you are, tiefling. I’m here to save you.”
“Save me? Why?”
“Silly child. You bring meat and blood—you’re one of my best customers. I’d be heartbroken if anything happened to you.” Her croaking laugh came from all around him.
“I have no cow’s heart to pay you with now, Tavet. What price would you ask for saving me?” He knew the answer, but he had to hear her say it.
“I told you before. I want Sherinna.”
Nowhere thrust his dagger backward into the empty air where he’d thought the night hag stood. Her laugh grew louder and sharper, until it felt like a harsh winter wind buffeting him on all sides.
“I told you before,” he said through clenched teeth, “I won’t hand her over to you. Not even to save my own life.”
“Suit yourself. Perhaps I won’t be so heartbroken after all.”
Tavet’s laughter became a howling wind and a stone floor beneath his feet, and his shoulder slammed into a rough wall. The faintest glimmer of light filtered up from somewhere below, just barely enough to trace the outline of a tunnel to his infernally enhanced senses.
An instant later, bright light stabbed at his eyes, and he saw Demascus standing like a beacon, divine radiance shining from his staff and enveloping his body without casting a shadow. Miri appeared in the tunnel next, then Sherinna, and finally Brendis, in quick succession.
“What took you all so long?” Nowhere whispered.
Looks of confusion flitted across every face, then Brendis laughed, dismissing the question as a joke.
Nowhere swallowed hard. Tavet must have snared him somewhere in between the portal in Sigil and its destination, turning an instantaneous journey into an opportunity for that disturbing conversation. To his companions, no time had passed.
A long, wordless howl echoed up the tunnel from somewhere below, carried on the rushing wind. It sounded like a tormented beast, and it did nothing to soothe Nowhere’s nerves.
What am I doing here? he thought. This isn’t worth dying for.
He let Brendis and the glowing Torch of the Gods lead the way down the tunnel, staying back near the edge of Demascus’s circle of light so he could duck into shadow at the first sign of trouble. The two of them set a pace that was more eager than safe as more howls, screams, and shouts filtered up the tunnel.
“Albric!” someone cried. A bestial squeal answered the cry.
Whatever the cultists were doing, it didn’t sound good. Nowhere wondered if their ritual had gone awry, or if it had succeeded in summoning a powerful being that failed to show the proper gratitude for its liberation. He realized he was clutching his dagger too tightly to use it, and he tried to relax his grip.
Brendis and Demascus paused as they reached the end of the tunnel, and Nowhere tried to peer around them to get a clear view of the vaulted chamber beyond. An archway formed of scarlet crystal stood in the center of the room, shedding a dim red light around it. Through the arch, Nowhere could just make out an unfamiliar city with a tall black tower rising above it. One man stood beside the arch, gripping the crystal with two hands while wailing in evident pain. His lower body was covered with a substance that looked like a liquid version of the crystal that formed the arch, shot through with flecks of gold and veins of silver. One tendril of the liquid stretched up his spine.
Seven other figures were spread across the large chamber, none of them fully human. One was a six-armed hulk with red crystal formations jutting from its back and shoulders. Another was a pain-wracked elf face at the center of a teeming mass of crystalline spiders. A dragonborn man clutched his own wrist and, as Nowhere watched, exhaled a cloud of fire to engulf his crystal-covered hand. The fire clung to his hand, drawing a scream of pain and fear from the dragonborn’s mouth.
“Minions of the Chained God!” Demascus shouted. His voice filled the huge chamber and echoed through it, silencing even the wind for an instant. “You stand under the judgment of all the gods, and the Sword of the Gods has come to execute that judgment.”
“And I didn’t think he could get any more arrogant and selfrighteous,” Nowhere muttered.
Sherinna heard him and smiled. “Shall we?” she said.
Nowhere frowned. No pile of gold waited to be claimed in the chamber—in fact, what gold he could see, gleaming around the neck of the man by the arch, was in imminent danger of being swallowed by the liquid crystal. Nowhere was pretty sure he didn’t want to touch that stuff. Tavet’s warning stuck in his mind: You proceed to your doom.
Why? he wondered. Why should I die here?
Sherinna didn’t wait for his answer. Stepping into the mouth of the tunnel, she stretched out her hands and hurled waves of fire into the chamber ahead of Brendis’s charge.
That’s why, he thought. Damn it.
He drew a deep breath to steady his nerves. As he slipped past Sherinna and into the chamber, he rested his hand on her shoulder for a moment. She shot him a puzzled smile even as gleaming bolts of magical energy shot from her fingertips to plunge into the six-armed monster that was lumbering toward her.
The cultists and monsters were in confused disarray, especially the ones who were still caught in the transformation from one to the other. Brendis intercepted the hulking thing, ensuring that it kept its distance from Sherinna, while Miri charged around to the left and attacked a creature with human legs, plated in armor, and the forequarters of a pantherlike monster, sleek and predatory. Demascus drew the sword from his back as he rushed straight toward the arch. As he moved, a column of divine fire roared down over the archway and the three nearest cultists.